Question

A school needs buses to transport 142 third graders, 153 fourth graders and 185 fifth graders. If each bus carries 32 students, How many buses does the school need for the students?

Answer 1

The school needs 16 buses to transport 480 students since each bus can carry 32 students and when dividing the total by the bus capacity, the result is rounded up to the next whole number.

Step-by-step explanation:

The question relates to determining the number of buses needed to transport a certain number of students. With 142 third graders, 153 fourth graders, and 185 fifth graders, the total number of students is 142 + 153 + 185 = 480. Each bus can carry 32 students, so to calculate the number of buses needed, divide the total number of students by the number of students each bus can carry: 480 ÷ 32 = 15. However, since you cannot have a fraction of a bus, you would need to round up to the next whole number, which means the school will need 16 buses to accommodate all the students.

This calculation ensures that all 480 students have a seat on the buses. If you were to use exactly 15 buses, there would be some students left without seats since 15 buses could only carry 15 x 32 = 480 students, but one must consider the indivisibility of buses.